The Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company (MCCPDC) is also constructing a state-of-the-art pharmaceutical factory in Dallas, expected to be completed by the end of 2022.

MCCPDC CEO, Alex Oshmyansky, explained that while the site is designed from the ground up to make small batches of a range of therapies, it is primarily targeting shortage products.

“Although it's a full cGMP-compliant facility and can do ANDA products and we're even in process with a BLA at the FDA to be manufactured at that site, it will primarily work as a 503B compounding facility,” the executive said at the AAM annual meeting.

This , he explained, will allow the company to very rapidly convert its lines and go to different product type and make it as quickly as possible to alleviate shortages before they happen or when such shortages occur.

“So it's a very targeted facility specifically for the issue of drug shortages,” Oshmyansky specified.

Some Indian industry executives, however, believe that the MCCPDC manufacturing effort will likely be a “drop in the ocean” in terms of capacity etc. to make a dent, at least for now.

“They would be better off making injectables and syringes which are forever in short supply and very profitable; for example in case of cancer care they are such a small part of the overall cost that if the manufacturer even doubles the price, the patient truly does not notice given his large expenditure on other elements of treatment,” said Ranjit Shahani, former vice-chairman of Novartis India Ltd.

Shahani doesn’t expect MCCPDC's plant to disrupt things meaningfully; Indian pharma companies, he notes, are making products very competitively in India for export so any additive disruption by MCCPDC will be minimal.

“MPCCPDC will be more of a ‘gadfly’ in this mix,” he declared.

Mark Cuban’s US Pharma Ventures: Ally Or Gadfly In The Mix For Indian Firms?

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